


Harbor

by Kanthia



Series: every flying whale is the wind fish [8]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Knocking gently on the fourth wall, Pretentious, Psychological, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: Sea bears foam; sleep bears dreams. Both end the same way...(a botw/link's awakening sort-of-crossover)
Series: every flying whale is the wind fish [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/898353
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	Harbor

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFMUg5WUYAEaAUE.jpg) line.

**i.[sea bears foam](https://d2skuhm0vrry40.cloudfront.net/2017/articles/2017-08-18-17-59/Zelda___Eventide_Island_Screenshot_2017_08_17_18_37_49.png/EG11/resize/690x-1/quality/75/format/jpg)**

It is tradition in Lurelin Village to look east at dawn to catch the sun rising over Eventide Island. The moment the sun crests the rock is a good time to make a wish, and a clear dawn is a sign of good fortune for the day.

It’s a nice way to start a day for Link, who spends so much time going here and there that he can’t help but learn how everyone worships time when nothing has changed in a generation: in Hateno Town they mark months by the recurrence of the Blood Moon, and in the Zora’s Domain, the new moon; in Rito Village, the new year begins when the sunset touches the Hebra West Summit; in Gerudo Town, when the sun rises over Spectacle Rock. In Kakariko Town they mark time perfectly in three-hundred-sixty-five-day sun cycles by the old royal calendar, and count the years up from the Calamity’s first appearance ten thousand one hundred years prior. The Goron understand that time begins and ends in the Death Caldera, and their calendar is not cyclical but linear, where time began when the volcano first belched fire, and the world will end when its heart turns to cold stone.

If the Korok keep time they also keep secrets, and though they track the motion of stars above the Deku Tree they also invent and celebrate holidays whenever they please. Link arrives one evening partway through the revelry of Pretend You Have a Butt Day, and leaves the next morning amidst the chaos of Act Like A Bokoblin Day. If you leave some children alone in the woods, and nobody ever grows old, and nobody has a fairy…

But in Lurelin they row their boats out to watch the sunrise, share hot tea and thoughtful silence, and then they go about their day.

On one such morning Link is nearby, intending to investigate the Palmorae Ruins, and when he sees the cluster of boats leaving harbor he drifts out with them. His intention is to watch from shore, or to call forth shoals of ice if he feels the need to get any closer, but then he’s called over and hoisted into a fishing skip, and watches the sun set a halo of fire about Koholit Rock.

 _Looks like a big old egg,_ he thinks, and in return for his curiosity they tell him an old old old legend, older than the Calamity, older than time: that Koholit Rock is the egg of a progenitor god called Levias, the Ocean King; that its domains are the sea, the wind, and dreams; that the world began when in the egg Levias fell to slumber; that their world Hyrule is but a fragment of its long long dream, and will end when it wakes.

 _If this is a dream_ , Link thinks, looking east, _then the Calamity is just a nightmare._

And if the purpose of a nightmare is to keep the dreamer from waking, in order to protect the fiction of the dream world, then in slaying the Calamity --

It occurs to Link then, as the sun splits off of the rock like a yolk, that he has no proof that he existed, or that any of this existed, before he woke up; that there is really never any proof that reality is a dream, or vice versa. It’s a disturbing thought, and eventually he decides that he may as well assume that everything exists, lest he think himself into a proverbial corner.

The Palmorae Ruins hold, among other things, shards of some ancient mirror. The fragments catches the sunset at twilight with a fierce magnificence, and Link wonders, and wonders.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
**ii.[sleep bears dreams](https://deconstructingvideogames.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/zelda-links-awakening-link-marin.png)**

Hyrule grows and changes and metamorphoses, and now and then sheds its old self like a shell. Link stumbles into those cast-off worlds on occasion: Labrynna, Termina, Lorule, Holodrum...

So he came back: that is to say, he was never really gone, just washed up on the Toronbo Shores like he belonged there.

Until he arrived, Koholint was all setting and no purpose; after he arrived, time started to flow again, forward-ish, or at least forward-adjacent. It is never really night on Koholint Island. Nobody sleeps, and nobody dreams -- save for those who sleep in the Dream Shrine, where one might dream of an ocarina.

But she is not Zelda, and this is not Hyrule. This is one of those little castaway husks of old worlds, where the days loop around in circles until the problem is solved -- or until the Goddesses tire of waiting and the ocean rises up and swallows everything. Link has earned a fond understanding and appreciation for these places like these, worlds delicate and picturesque as a ship in a bottle, where one’s purpose is as clear as still water.

(Is he the Wind Fish, dreaming of Link?)

— Only it isn’t, as he comes to realize at the facade of the Southern Face Shrine: this is not a world but a dream of a world, and his ocarina is only the idea of an ocarina, as fragile as a bubble on a needle’s tip, as ephemeral as the scene on a sleeper’s eye. The things on Koholint are metaphors for his waking life, whatever his waking life may be.

(Or is he Link, dreaming of the Wind Fish?)

Turtle Rock, for example, comes screaming to life with the reminder that dead things ought to stay that way; the ghost that haunts the House by the Bay is a meditation on the ways one might choose or not choose to pass on; the Full Moon Cello plays a solemn tune, sparse and dry as the light of dawn over the ocean. Death haunts the edges of Koholint Island and bears up on its shores, but Link is not a seafarer in this regard, and can only swim in freshwater.

Perhaps, he thinks, as he ascends Mount Tamaranch, when the dream is over he’ll tuck Marin into his cap and sail back to Hyrule with that memory, keep her alive in the only way he knows how. He pulls out the ocarina, and readies the first notes of the song of awakening.

\-- And yet, who’s to say the story continues after the last notes of the Wind Fish’s Ballad give out, and the world fades to black?  
  


* * *

  
  
**iii.[both end the same way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySartfhYFAI)**

Upon Mount Tamaranch there is the Egg, and in the Egg there is the Dreamer; and in the Dream there is Mabe Village, and in Mabe Village there is the Shrine, and in the Shrine there is the Dream, and in the Dream there is the Ocarina.

But Mabe Village is in ruins now, and not on Koholint Island or Eventide Island where it is supposed to be; and the Ocarina isn’t there, either, nor buried in a Haunted Grove, nor gifted by the Sage of the Forest, nor atop the Fortress of Wind, nor hidden in a lizard’s heart. There may have been a time when it was a treasure of the royal family -- but if it was, Link will not remember.

So he does the only thing he can do, which is to observe, press on, and not think too hard about what happens after the dream ends...

(...If you listen closely, the Ballad of the Wind Fish haunts Hyrule Castle.)

**Author's Note:**

> find me being slightly more articulate on [tumblr](https://kanthia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
